Sharing a message of hope at Company Theatre

Courage comes in many forms. For some, it’s born of circumstances, or one’s convictions. For others, it comes from being able to show those circumstances and convictions — vividly and truthfully — so that even more people can learn what courage means, and take from that a message of hope. That’...

Courage comes in many forms. For some, it’s born of circumstances, or one’s convictions. For others, it comes from being able to show those circumstances and convictions — vividly and truthfully — so that even more people can learn what courage means, and take from that a message of hope. That’s the challenge the young actors from The Academy of the Company Theater of Norwell will take up when they perform “The Hiding Place” this week and next.

Based on the best-selling book by the same name, written by Hingham residents John and Elizabeth Sherrill, “The Hiding Place” tells the story of Corrie ten Boom and her family. The ten Booms hid Jews in their small house in Haarlem, the Netherlands, while the Nazis occupied that country. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the family belonged to the Dutch Reformed Church, which had taught them to believe that all people are equal before God. Several members of the ten Boom family also belonged to the Dutch resistance. Ten Boom cited her faith and her family’s faith as their reason for helping Jews hide from the Nazis, and as what kept her going after her eventual arrest and imprisonment in the notorious Ravensbrück concentration camp. Corrie survived. Her sister Betsie did not, nor did her father Casper. Other members of her family also lost their lives. In 1967, the Yad Vashem Remembrance Authority recognized ten Boom as one of the “Righteous Among the Nations”.

The performances on May 10th and 11th will be the formal East Coast premiere of this play. The theater has added some material with permission from the playwright.

Putting on this play has made the students come face to face with ugliness. One scene calls for a student actor to drag another down the stairs by her hair, and, according to The Company Theater Co-Artistic Director and Founder Zoe Bradford, “ … he had to learn how to deal with that.”

Three of the student leads remarked that when they learned about the Holocaust in school, it didn’t feel real to them. They said some teachers also downplayed the uncomfortable subject. Doing the play, however, has made their schoolwork come alive, become personal.

Catherine Andersen, 18, who goes to Hanover High School and plays Betsie, said that a demonstration of numbers hit hard. They counted the people in the room during rehearsal, she said, “ … and did the math. For each one of us in this room, 200,000 people died.”

For Colie Smigliani, 18, who also goes to Hanover High and plays Corrie, meeting the Sherrills made the experience real and vivid in a way that reading the play hadn’t. “Being able to talk to them, to know they knew Corrie, it made it all so professional.”

Tony Beal, 18, who attends Hingham High and plays Casper, agreed. “They’re amazing. When you’re in the same space with them, it’s just so filled with clean energy.”

Page 2 of 3 - The Sherrills had brought items that ten Boom owned and bequeathed to them. Among these were a teapot and a star of David that had been sewn on a man’s clothes.

Andersen said, “Betsie spent the family food money on a leaky teapot, and they brought the teapot. It was so amazing to hold that.”

Beal agreed. “The teapot was so cool.”

The Sherrills visited the troupe as part of the rehearsals. They also made a video of Elizabeth Sherrill recounting how she and her husband wrote the book, knowing Corrie ten Boom, and of their visit to the rehearsal. Many students posted comments about the visit later on Facebook, all positive, all awed by the experience. The short video will air after all performances to spark some discussion among the audience.

All performances includes not only those open to the public, but also several middle school groups, including those from Rockland, Bridgewater, and Marshfield. “Under our artistic mission is an educational component,” Bradford said. “The kids will live it, that message, that story, those characters. That’s a lesson they’ll take with them the rest of their lives. It’s a great experience for students to do, and for other students to see students doing it.”

Meanwhile, to get even more ready for this performance, Bradford has arranged for Rabbi Shira Joseph of Congregation Sha’aray Shalom in Hingham to talk to the student actors. “She’s very supportive of this project,” Bradford said.

Bradford believes that the educational component to the teen academy encompasses more than history. “Any time you can create public awareness and change someone’s life, well, that’s a ministry, isn’t it? That’s a good thing. I hope we find other projects that will shine out to them.”

The Academy of the Company Theater of Norwell involves about 200 students, and puts on two productions a year. Ages range from under ten to college. “Anyone can be involved, no matter their level of theater experience, so long as they’re a student,” Bradford said. She said the teen academy took off about six years ago when they divided the program between the younger ages and the teenagers.

“The Hiding Place” is not the first play the Academy has performed that explores controversial, delicate subject matter. Two years ago teen actors also took on “The Laramie Project”, which examined the death of Matthew Sheppard.

But “The Hiding Place” seems personal to Bradford because she came to the play through meeting the Sherrills, the book’s authors. She met them three years ago at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Hingham, shortly after they’d moved here. “We exchanged stories,” Bradford said. “They have amazing stories. They’d be here for the premiere, but they had already made plans to travel in Europe.” The Sherrills are both in their upper eighties.

Page 3 of 3 - “We might not have taken the video just a few weeks into rehearsal,” said Michelle McGrath, the theater’s publicist, “if we hadn’t known that they’d be gone, and now it’s become integral to the teaching component of this show.”

However the play has come to be produced here, and whatever the educational impact on the audiences who view it, the young actors are taking meaningful lessons away from it. “Because these are real people [we’re playing], you have to be honest,” Smigliani said. “So much of what you hear about World War II is dark and gloom. We didn’t want to it to be like that, but to give a message of hope.”

Her colleague Andersen agreed. “The Holocaust is the background. This story is about how this family tried to do something about it.”

You can find more information about times and ticketing, as well as a link to the video of the Sherrills attending the students’ rehearsal, at: companytheatre.com/academy.html.